


a little vision of the start at the end

by soapboxblues



Category: Fringe, Grimm (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soapboxblues/pseuds/soapboxblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>five steps to a better future for olivia dunham (or the story of beginnings not ends).</i> set post s3 for fringe and mid s2 for grimm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a little vision of the start at the end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/gifts).



> Prompt: transferred to a new jurisdiction/program/city. Title taken from Florence + the Machine's "Breath of Life"

Peter gets in the machine and disappears. 

This was always a possibility.

Weeks turn into months and life goes on. The world heals. Walter takes more drugs, thinks bigger, smiles less. Astrid buries herself in the work Walter thinks up. 

Olivia waits.

She waits until September visits. He looks at her with big eyes that should be expressionless but aren’t and tilts his head to the side like always as he tells her that this is not the end for her but the beginning. He tells her that Peter could return and she’s not sure if those two theories are supposed to connect.

She’d like to believe it would make a difference. It doesn’t.

\---

i. 

Three months in, Olivia takes a bullet in the shoulder.

She spends two weeks recuperating, and when she returns to the lab, she discovers Nick Burkhardt waiting for her. There is no warning from Broyles, but Olivia knew someone had been assisting Astrid and Walter while she was out of commission. She just never imagined this – never imagined someone like him.

The moment she sees him she is reminded of Peter. The new agent has darker hair and is a few inches shorter. And unlike Peter, this agent carries a gun and a badge and she can tell by his posture he's spent most of his life on the West Coast. (Peter used to laugh at her when she said there was a connection between the two.) She can also tell that as much time as he has spent in law enforcement, very little, if any, has been in the FBI. 

And yet, Nick Burkhardt looks at her and he has the same aura Peter had. The competence with just enough swagger to be endearing and not enough to make him seem arrogant. Olivia takes a step back on impulse, afraid that presence will burn her.

"Nice to meet you, Agent Burkhardt," she says.

Nick shakes her hand and even his handshake feels the same as Peter's did that very first day they met. "Likewise Agent Dunham."

His smile is too quick, too bright and his eyes are a completely different shade of blue. Olivia stops comparing him to Peter the moment his smile reaches his eyes and she sees uncertainty to match her own staring back at her.

\---

Nick is only meant to stay for one case - and in the end, he does, but it takes much more than the usual few weeks to crack. Olivia and her team have been tracking a group of animalistic shapeshifters who answer to someone they’ve only identified as The King. The problem is these shapeshifters can only be seen when their adrenaline spikes and they lose focus. The rest of the time they look like anyone else. This is the reason Olivia takes a bullet to the shoulder. This is the reason they call in Nick.

Nick is a specialist on the especially weird and wacky - the things even Walter can’t explain. The cases only Nick and a handful of other gifted people can actually solve because they can see these shapeshifters when they’re not intended to be seen.

It’s genetic - Walter discovers. Nick naturally produces cortexiphan. Twice the amount that Olivia has in her. While Olivia can move through worlds and bend reality, Nick sees other genetic mutations that have learned to camouflage themselves over the centuries.

Walter has scientific terms for Nick’s world, but Nick’s descriptions have a mythic twist to them. They aren’t cortexiphan anomalies and animalistic shapeshifters, but royals and wesen. Ancient German and French names tied to ancient lore from all over the world. Where Walter and Astrid diagram and plot through charts and formulas on a laptop, Nick and his ancestors have mapped out their history through yellow paged journals and hand sketches, enough books to fill a library, let alone that ridiculous trailer he parks in his backyard.

At the same time, Nick is a cop, not a storyteller. He says he’s glad there’s a reason grounded in science behind his existence. It’s easier for a man in his profession to deal with. And yet, he still calls himself a grimm, and after a while everyone else in the lab does too.

\---

Along the way, one case becomes an umbrella case and more often than not, Nick is at Olivia’s side. They work so well together that she doesn’t question the first time he shows up on a case that has nothing to do with grimms. In fact, it’s not until they’re filing the paperwork that she realizes there’s anything different at all.

 

 

step ii.

She swears off relationships after Peter disappears. 

She doesn’t swear off men.

The problem with opening up her heart the way she did with Peter is that once he leaves, the little corner she carved out for him stays. She feels that emptiness constantly. She needs to fill the void and so even though she doesn't want to date, she does. Each candidate is awful. Each romance lacks any real connection. But her bed stays warm some nights and it's enough to dull the ache - to manage the pain. 

"Maybe if you tried harder," Nick says.

Olivia doesn't remember telling him about her dating woes, but she also doesn't remember the last four shots of whiskey she downed. 

It had been a rough day. They both watched a man jumped off a sixteen story building because he tried to change the world and had become a monster instead. Olivia can still hear his anguished screams, but they get a little fuzzier with each drink.

When she looks at him, his smile is meant to be encouraging but instead it just reads as amused. "How many women have you dated since you came to town?"

"None." Nick shifts. Instead of leaning towards her, now he is propped up on his stool, creating as much space between them as possible. It’s the little cues that make all the difference. "I've sworn off women."

Olivia sighs. "I tried that."

"Swearing off women?" Nick quirks an eyebrow.

Olivia shakes her head with a smile and doesn’t dignify the comment with a response. She downs another shot and it burns harder than whiskey should. This is usually the sign to quit, but instead she just signals for another. "You know you shouldn't swear off women. You're too good a person not to be happy."

"Why'd you swear off dating?" Nick asks, but before she can remind him that she hasn’t, he amends the statement. "Or at least dating people you could actually like."

"Trust issues." Olivia says, and then because alcohol makes her lips loose she blurts out, "I want to find someone but I'm scared if I do they'll get in a machine and disappear."

Nick pauses as if he’s considering the absurdity of that statement, but he knows enough about what Olivia does, about the history of her job and her team to know exactly what Olivia is talking about. "That's highly unlikely." 

"Well, I doubt the next woman you find will be poisoned by a hexenbiest, forget you and then fall in love with your boss and yet you still swore off dating too."

"That's not why I swore off dating," Nick counters. Olivia expects to see that same teasing grin when she spares him a glance but instead he’s studying the condensation building on the neck of his beer. "No one will ever understand what I do. And I could keep it a secret like I did before, but..."

Their knees brush and neither of them pulls away. Olivia can’t remember when he crawled back into her space. "It's a big part of who you are."

"It's everything." Nick says, and he sighs along with it – something heavy and meaningful. Suddenly, Olivia wants nothing more than to reach across the bar and cover his hand with her own. Instead she crosses her arms on the bar, tucks her hands under her forearms to steady them. "Yeah." 

She orders another shot and he sticks to beer and they watch a minute or so tick by on the Celtics game. His knee still bumps into hers and his presence alone compels her to speak. "What about Astrid? She'd be perfect for you."

"Astrid's dating Agent Lee." Nick says, "The guy with the glasses who works out of the Connecticut office."

"I know who he is." She doesn't really. She’s pretty sure he showed up when she was sharing a brain with William Bell and then again right after Peter left when she was barely functioning. She can pretend otherwise though. Or she could if Nick didn’t laugh as though he can see right through her.

"It's too bad. I would have suggested Agent Lee for you." Nick pauses, tilting his head with a wicked smile. "But since he obviously didn’t make an impression on you."

"Shut up, Nick." She laughs until her head hurts and it turns into a groan. "At least Astrid's happy."

"Let's toast to that." Nick raises his beer and there’s barely a sip left. Olivia’s glass isn’t much better. "To other people's happiness!”

When they clink glasses, their fingers brush. This is the last thing Olivia remembers.

\---

The next morning she wakes up with a hangover the size of Texas. There’s a glass of water by the bed and a note tucked under a pair of Advil’s. Nick’s handwriting is still sharp but his words go a little crooked at the end of the second sentence – the only sign that he had been drinking too. In her still groggy state, she downs the medicine and tosses the note into the garbage. She falls back asleep and comes to sometime in the afternoon when her phone rings and she’s summoned to the lab for their next case.

Later she will realize she can’t remember what the note said, only that the mere thought of it makes her lips subconsciously twitch into a smile.

\---

She has thought about it before. 

When he places his hand on the small of her back while he’s opening the door for her. When he pats her on the shoulder on his way out of the office after a good day. The bright smile that accompanies the shoulder checks and knee bumps. It’s the little touches from Nick that manage to make her wonder what it would be like if it were something more.

But wondering isn’t enough to remember the curses of the past. She promises herself she’ll try to stay professional.

\---

These promises she makes – they rarely keep.

Three years ago, the name John was barely dead on her tongue when Peter walked into her life with his careless smile that did nothing to mask his troubled eyes. And she said - _no_. He was too different. He was too alike. Too much of everything and above all else trouble. He would break her heart.

She fell in love anyway.

 

 

 

step iii. 

One day down the road, Olivia will stop for gas at one of those sleazy corner stations because they’re the cheapest and Broyles has been stressing budget cuts. Nick will insist on paying inside. His last words to her will be _trust me_ and Olivia will think _famous last words_ ironically.

Forty-eight hours later she discovers trusting him has become intuitive.

\---

Before that, nothing happens. They work on their case and solve a few others that pop up along the way. She brings him coffee and he sends her playlists of obscure 90s bands he thinks she should know about. They talk about the weather and about sports and sometimes they talk about the bigger picture – all the strange things that pass through a person’s mind that they don’t bother talking about with just another co-worker.

Nothing happens, but eventually it’s as though everything changed.

\---

When he kisses her, Olivia blames it on the adrenaline. At least, that’s what Olivia thinks caused him to do it because she was so sure if anyone was going to make a move it would have been her.

Nick had been missing 48 hours. He walked into a sleazy corner gas station and didn’t come out. Olivia had tracked him, and she would have been the one to pull him out of the warehouse if not for the nasty scuffle with one of their leads that had left her bleeding. Instead Olivia had paced the offices, trying to ignore the lightheadedness from the freshly bandaged three inch cut on her forehead. She waited for him to return with the extraction crew lead by Agent Lee.

When Nick gets back, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. They don’t go running towards each other or embrace dramatically. They just sort of edge into each other’s orbit, sharing soft smiles and encouraging touches. It is not until later when the office is empty except for the two of them that they admit how scary it was.

Or at least, Olivia admits how scared she was, admits how silly that is seeing as he was the one kidnapped by a pack of Coyotls. She admits that she’s frustrated that he was kidnapped right under her nose and that she really owes him one. It takes awhile before she notices that he has gone quiet. She wonders how long it’s been and if she’s been babbling.

She spares a glance at Nick and finds him staring at her, one eyebrow quirked and a silly smirk on his face. Suddenly she is hit with a wave of nervousness. “What?”

Usually Olivia has a few inches on Nick, but with Nick sitting on the corner of her desk, when he leans in, he actually has to swoop down. Before Olivia can register what is happening, he is kissing her – just the barest press of lips. Olivia doesn’t dare move even as her entire body thrums with nervous energy. It only lasts a few seconds before Nick is jerking back, pulling a rush of air from Olivia as he does so.

“Shit,” Nick says, the words escaping as soon as he pulls away. He wipes the back of his mouth with his hand and Olivia can’t stop staring at his lips. “Sorry.”

Olivia opens her mouth to say something but all the words die there. She’s still thinking about his lips. And his ridiculous smile. And the fact he almost died today and his last words to her were _trust me_ and she did. It’s how she was able to find him. It’s too terrifying to speak about out loud so she presses one hand on either side of his face and pulls him back in for another kiss – this one deep and warm and reciprocated.

When she kisses him, Olivia finds she cannot lie about her motivations. She kisses him because he came back. 

\---

 

The next morning she wakes up with his arm still curled around her waist and his breath against the back of her neck. She can feel his eyes on her, boring a hole into her back. She turns and while she would be okay avoiding this conversation, he doesn’t waste any time pretending this isn’t something they need to address.

“We have two choices,” Nick says. His voice is thick with sleep, too heavy and sudden. Olivia flinches at its sound and she can feel his frown against her shoulder. She takes a deep breath and spares him a look. It seems to give him the courage to continue. “We can pretend this never happened.”

His toe nudges hers under the sheets. Olivia traps the foot it belongs to between her own two feet. “Or?”

“Or we pretend this won’t end terribly.”

Olivia laughs. Option B sounds right up her alley so she smiles into the next kiss and swallows Nick’s own worries. 

 

 

 

step iv.

For their first date, Nick takes her to the movies.

They see some superhero movie with a lot of loud explosions. Olivia barely pays attention to any of it. She’s too distracted by the heavy weight of Nick’s arm around her shoulder. The whole situation reeks of normalcy. She’s waiting for someone to jump up and yell _surprise! you’re on candid camera_. But it doesn’t happen. And eventually Olivia stops waiting for it and leans into him.

“That was nice,” Olivia says. And because Nick is one of the best detectives Olivia’s met, he laughs.

“You’re new at this,” Nick says. The incident with Juliette aside, from what he’s told Olivia, Nick had a normal dating life. His relationships had always lasted long and had all ended on good terms. He did movie nights and baseball games and fancy dinners. He double dated with friends and cooked halfway decent meals for nights in. He knew the art of dating well and had pretty much perfected it.

On the other hand, Olivia never stayed with a boy more than a month as a teenager. She had affairs with married men in college and once she was in the Bureau she swore off dating altogether until she met John and that was all done in secret. She and Peter had skipped right past the dating part and just decided on being in love. 

“Yes,” Olivia admits, “How bad was I?”

“Not bad at all,” Nick lies. His hand slips into hers and squeezes, and from that point on, she stops waiting for the other shoe to drop. At least when they’re on a date, that is.

\---

Walter finds out first.

It surprises Olivia because he is usually so oblivious to anything not related to his experiments, but he pays attention to Olivia out of habit. She doesn’t know what it is that gives her away, but one day she and Nick exchange goodbyes in the lab and her eyes must linger too long or her smile must go a little too bright when he smiles at her because when she looks back at Walter he is staring at her. 

“He’s a fascinating specimen,” Walter states – implication present in every word. She expects disappointment. Maybe even sadness, but instead it is just hollow, maybe a tad curious.

“Walter, I-”

“I didn’t expect you to wait for Peter,” Walter says, bittersweet smile nudging its way onto his face. “And he would have wanted you to be happy.”

Walter has decided that Peter is dead, but Olivia still wakes up in the middle of the night from the nightmares. _He should return,_ September had promised, but when and how and what he would return as were never clear and so Olivia dreams of disembodied voices and shadows creeping over her and wakes in terror so bold it silences her.

Instead she struggles to catch her breath and her body goes as stiff as a board, but she never makes a noise. For minutes, sometimes hours, she stares at the ceiling, listening to Nick’s even breathes and feels the guilt build. Peter would have wanted her to be happy, but she’s discovering he was best at making her miserable.

“I am happy.” Olivia says because eventually she hopes it will be the truth.

Walter smiles for real hearing those words. He is observant up until a point.

\---

Months turn into a year and year starts to become two. The dreams taper off and with them the sadness and bitterness drift away as well. Nick stays. It still hasn’t ended terribly and she thinks they’re both surprised.

She and Nick both stand up at Astrid and Lincoln’s wedding. Their eyes lock during the vows and it’s one of the most intense feelings Olivia has ever felt. 

“I’m happy,” Olivia tells Astrid at the reception. It has become the truth.

\---

Rachel comes to visit in the spring. Ella stays home with Greg, which Olivia regrets not just because she misses her niece but also because she would have been a great buffer between Nick and Rachel who engage in some sort of silent war of wills. Olivia isn’t surprised. Rachel still asks about Peter and Olivia has gotten tired of telling her sister he left and not being able to explain why she can’t go after him.

Nick takes it in stride because he is Nick and he’s got even this part of dating down to a science – winning over the family.

Eventually Rachel caves and reluctantly tells Olivia he’s one of the good ones. After she’s gone, they share a bottle of wine on the couch and watch old black and white movies. 

“It’s our anniversary.” Nick whispers, against the side of her head because it’s the kind of thing he would remember and she wouldn’t. She looks up at him, and he beams with pride and it makes Olivia wrap her arms around his waist and hold on tight. When he kisses her, all she can think is how she wishes this moment could never end.

She should know better than to think that way.

 

 

 

step v.

The next day they get their guy.

They never talk about what happens when they catch The King. Nick’s FBI badge is only good until the moment they make that arrest and as they circle closer to their answers, maybe they should have had that conversation. They just never got around to it. Or maybe they never imagined the day would come after so many fruitless close calls.

But one day, they kill the King. The bounty is lifted from Nick’s head and Broyles tells him he can go home. Nick looks at Olivia. She finds herself staring back. Neither of them can tell what the other is thinking.

Neither of them knows what to say.

\---

Maybe it’s another one of her patterns, but she never seems to realize just how much she loves someone until they’re taken away from her.

It happened with John. He died and she realized just how much she wanted to love him. How far she was willing to go to hold onto that little piece of him that had weaved its way into her mind. 

It happened with Peter. One day he was just another co-worker and then when he slipped away to the Other Side after he found out the truth about his childhood, Olivia realized just how much she needed him – just how much she wanted him back.

Both times ended with heartbreak. John – all parts of him – died for good, and Peter may have gone back for her but only to build a relationship so deep that it hurt even worse when he left for good.

And now, Nick will leave too, and Olivia knows if he does it will hurt worse than the last two combined because she let him into her heart because he was the one who always came back.

\---

He is waiting for her when she gets home. 

At work, he had slipped out without her noticing and for a second, Olivia wondered if he was just going to disappear like Peter did. Pick up and move back to Portland without a word and hope it was for the best. But instead, she finds him sitting in her living room, leaning with his elbows braced on his knees and his hands folded under his chin like he was thinking. He stands as soon as she’s dropped her keys on the table.

“I can stay,” Nick says immediately. “I want to stay.”

Olivia feels a rush of relief so palpable she almost cries, but instead of saying yes, she blurts out, “I want to go.” 

Nick’s face falls and Olivia panics. She moves forward, taking both his hands so that she can keep her own from shaking. They both keep their heads ducked and Olivia takes a deep breath making sure to focus her thoughts before she speaks again. “I want to leave Boston. I want to go with you back to Portland.”

Nick looks up now, and Olivia follows his cue. She watches his brow knit in confusion. “But your life is here.”

“My past is here.” And what she doesn’t say is that it waits for her around every corner. At work and in her apartment, she sees Peter everywhere. Even though it stopped hurting, it still makes her restless. “Our future is someplace else.”

“We don’t have to go to Portland.” Nick shakes his head and Olivia remembers he has ghosts of his own there.

“We can go anywhere,” Olivia says, and Nick smiles.

In the end, they choose Portland.

 

 

and i.

Portland is a nice city. Quieter than Boston. Instead of rustic beauty it is all edges and sharp lines, buildings that are too new to be considered classic and too old to be considered modern.

They settle in a new house. And Olivia meets the infamous Monroe. It’s only twenty minutes after she’s set down the last box off the truck, when Monroe is there with a welcome basket telling her he’s sorry but he couldn’t wait for Nick to introduce them. She offers him coffee because it’s the first thing she unpacked and he smiles around the cup even though she can tell he’d prefer tea. 

He talks a lot. Mostly about how happy he is that Nick is finally happy. And when Nick finally shows up, they settle right back into their usual bantering as though it hasn’t been years. Olivia knows right away that they made the right choice.

After a few weeks in Portland, September shows up at her door to tell her Peter has reappeared. Olivia isn’t surprised and yet, she doesn’t feel much of anything hearing the news.

“You sure you don’t want to go see him?” Nick asks and one of the reasons she loves him is because he can suggest things like this and actually mean them. Rachel was right. He’s one of the good ones. 

Maybe someday she’ll go back to Boston. She’ll visit Astrid and Walter and have that all important talk with Peter. She’ll give him the closure he couldn’t give her. But for now, she and Nick will solve crimes and host game night. They will talk about marriage and kids over wine and cheap beer and maybe they will finally adopt a dog. 

“I don’t want to be anywhere but here,” Olivia says and smiles. 

September was right.

It’s not an end. It’s a beginning.


End file.
